W ith some of its showings in the huge Imax format, this National Geographic-backed documentary feels like a callback to the early, glory days of large-format cinema when it was all about spectacle and scale, turning footage of natural-world wonders into an immersive experience. Those with a fear of heights or prone to vertigo may find this all a bit too immersive, in fact. That’s even more the case considering the point of the movie appears to be to provoke anxiety in the viewer for nearly the entire running time as we watch the subjects scale the steeper, far less travelled north face of Mount Everest and then, for reasons never quite adequately explained, ski back down it again.

Such was the mission of experienced mountaineer Jim Morrison , an amiable-seeming fellow who, like all of those who pursue extreme sports, seems to feel a compulsion to put himself in the kind of grave danger that, should things go wrong, would put other people in danger rescuing him.…